


At The Height Of My Esteem

by Akumeoi



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Banter, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 07:46:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20060500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akumeoi/pseuds/Akumeoi
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley are on a little post-armagedidn't field trip together when Aziraphale re-opens their long held discussion on whether or not Crowley is a good person. Crowley's opinion is that he isn't. They have a friendly argument about it.





	At The Height Of My Esteem

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dedicated to Elena, who thinks Crowley is a jerk. Thank you for inspiring me to write down our discussion about it, and for giving the fic its setting. It's so nice to be able to enjoy Good Omens with you.  
And thank you to Adriana for making sure all my commas are in the right place.
> 
> The song [Angels on the Moon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S38-mjy5NtA) has absolutely nothing to do with the story, but is very relevant to the setting.  
Comments welcome!

A demon looked out over the blackness of space. The Earth hung before him, glowing and vibrant in all its green, white, and blue glory. In Crowley's professional star-builder opinion, it was beautiful - just not as beautiful as anything made by him.

Sitting beside him on the shared picnic blanket and cushions they had brought from Earth, was Aziraphale, his white wings loosely folded behind him. The two of them had flown to the moon for a spot of Earth-gazing at Crowley's post-apocalyptic whim. He had decided to fulfil a small part of his desire to run away to the stars, even if only for an afternoon. Plus, Crowley wanted to go see the Apollo moon landing site, where he could derive some entertainment from Aziraphale by threatening to “accidentally” muck it all up.

The pair had been sitting in companionable silence for half an hour, but if Crowley had to guess, he would imagine that Aziraphale was regretting they hadn't been able to bring a picnic due to the difficulties of eating in a vacuum. As for Crowley, he was just watching the Earth and enjoying the novel, still, cold and floaty atmosphere of space.

"And to think,” Aziraphale said, breaking the silence, “all of it could have just been gone…"

Still looking out over the Earth, Crowley imagined its greens turned to greys, its blues turned to browns, its whites turned to yellows. He and Aziraphale shuddered in unison.

After a moment, Aziraphale spoke again. "What if I did the wrong thing and you did the right thing?"

"Didn't you ask me that 6,000 years ago?" Crowley asked, cocking his head in question.

"Oh, yes, I know, but… recent events and all that."

"Recent events?"

"Yes, well…" Aziraphale sighed. "It occurred to me that all I did to thwart Armageddon was try and shoot the Antichrist, and to be frank, looking back on it that doesn't seem like a particularly angelic action. Whereas you, my dear, actually managed to stop the Antichrist from being a threat simply by mixing up a basket."

Crowley grimaced. "Please, angel, it wasn't on purpose, I am not a good person, we have been over this many times."

"You always used to say that, but I always thought it was because you were afraid of getting into trouble with your lot-"

"Ex-lot." Crowley winced even as he said it, but he didn’t have time to come up with something better while Aziraphale was still talking.

"-and not because you were unwilling to admit that you have a spark of goodness in you. You can't deny it. I can't count how many times you've saved me from getting into trouble for no other reason than that you felt like it."

Crowley had tolerated Aziraphale calling him various permutations of “good” and “kind” occasionally over the years, but he had thought Aziraphale knew better than to try and permanently label a demon either one of those things, even if the demon was him. Scowling, he said, "Yes, but that's you, angel. I like you. I wouldn't do it for just anyone."

"Alright, what about all those miracles you did for me as part of the Arrangement? Whether you like it or not, you've helped a lot of people."

"Laziness. Sheer laziness." Crowley waved his hand expansively as if to indicate the magnitude of his sloth, or maybe just the size of the bed he liked to sleep in whenever he could get away with it. "How else was I to keep the Arrangement going? If I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain, you wouldn’t have done any demonic work for me in return."

Aziraphale shifted, a crease appearing in his forehead at the reminder he'd ever done anything that could be classified as _demonic work_, even though he had done it willingly at the time.

"You could have lied!" he retorted. "Maybe at the beginning of the Arrangement I would have checked to see if you'd really done the miracles you were supposed to do, but later on? If you said you'd done them, you know I would have believed you."

"Would you?" said Crowley, who seriously doubted the angel would have been able to muster up that level of trust for him all the way back in the middle ages.

"Well… yes," Aziraphale admitted. "It wasn't as if I could always check if you had fulfilled your end of the Arrangement. Doing so would have defeated the purpose of sharing the burden of travelling. Especially before the invention of the car."

Crowley snorted at the implication that the invention of the car had had any impact on Aziraphale's lifestyle whatsoever.

"But you knew that, dear boy," Aziraphale finished.

Crowley thought to himself for a moment, gaze roaming over the black sky. Clearly he had missed a lot of opportunities to take advantage of Aziraphale in the past. But then again, if Heaven had figured out "Aziraphale" wasn't performing miracles as reported, one or both of them would have ended up in big trouble. So it had been in Crowley's best interest to be trustworthy at the time. Still, he was irrationally irritated at himself for having justified Aziraphale's faith in him _then_ so Aziraphale could be annoying _now_. Crowley was eager to get Aziraphale to stop looking so pleased with himself, like he'd proven something, which he definitely hadn't.

"I don't see why you're so eager to prove that I'm the good person here. By the logic you started off with, wouldn't that make you a bad person?" Crowley said casually.

"No," Aziraphale instantly replied, straightening his posture, "it makes me a good person who occasionally does bad things. Just like you. To a different degree. Perhaps an inverted one."

Crowley chuckled. Aziraphale couldn’t resist saying he was the better person even in a conversation where he was trying to convince Crowley that _Crowley_ was a good person.

"What?" Aziraphale said, somewhat petulantly. "I'm simply being realistic. You _are_ a demon after all. I would never wish to deny your true nature, or force you to be something you're not."

"I'd like to see you try," Crowley retorted… even if it was a bit of a relief to know that Aziraphale didn't have any false illusions just because Crowley had happened to help him stop the Apocalypse.

Aziraphale coughed, because it was usually beneath him to snort with disdain. Crowley sniffed.

"I don't get it," Crowley said at length. "How can you sit there and say that you think I'm good when you know what I spend all day doing, every day? I've ruined countless human lives, and we both know that is not an exaggeration. I’ve murdered people, and I don't have the excuse of smiting them like you do."

If it was hard to say the words, it was only because Aziraphale had a history of looking down on Crowley’s work.

But that finally gave Aziraphale pause. He took a deep breath, turning to look Crowley in the face, then spoke again all in a rush. "But you don't like to litter and you won't hurt children and the things that humans do which cause large-scale suffering and pain are repulsive to you, and they're not even to some angels. You were civil to me before you ever knew me. I didn’t have to work to get you to be kind to me. Goodness is on a spectrum and you could easily have been the worst demon I know, getting ideas from humans all the time, but you're not. You are the best. To me that counts as a moral victory even if it wouldn't be enough for a human or an angel. And-" and here his voice grew bolder- "if I'm considered soft by heaven's standards, you must certainly be considered soft by hell's."

Crowley rolled his eyes at the 'moral victory' bit. "You've put way too much thought into this," he said, heaving a long-suffering sigh. "If I have preferences in the kind of evil I will and won't do, it doesn't make me any less of a bad person on the whole. But I suppose that last bit is true. If they knew in Hell what I'd really been up to, rather than what I said I'd been doing in my reports, I definitely would have been in trouble."

"So there!" Aziraphale said, clenching a triumphant fist.

Crowley rolled his eyes again. "Your best argument for me being supposedly good is that you've met people that are worse. That's hardly an argument, is it?"

Aziraphale paused. "Look, why don't you want to believe it?"

"Because it simply isn't true."

"But it is!"

"Oh, for Satan’s sake…" Crowley said, throwing up his hands. "Maybe the fact that you want so deeply to believe I'm good just proves that _you_ are good, angel. Isn't it a bit angelic of you to have faith in the goodness of - man, well, not man. Being."

Aziraphale's expression softened. "That's very kind of you to say. Maybe so. But that would make me motivated… starting from a place of optimism, if you like. It doesn’t make me wrong."

Crowley scowled, deciding to put an end to this stupid conversation once and for all. "Do you want me to list reasons why _you_ are a bastard?"

"Not really, no." Aziraphale looked suitably chastened.

"Well then let's drop it, shall we? You can have your opinion and I will keep mine."

"Oh, alright,” Aziraphale finally conceded. He gave a little pout and folded his arms for a moment, but then he relented. “But for the record, Crowley, I do think highly of you, and… I am glad to know you as you are." 

Aziraphale smiled, one of his genuine, glowing smiles, filled with a radiance all of his own. Looking back at him, Crowley couldn’t help but mirror him, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards of their own volition. Maybe Aziraphale was wrong about Crowley being a good person, but it didn’t really matter in the end, if Aziraphale liked him as he was. And he was glad to know Aziraphale as he was too, incorrect impressions and bastard and all.

"If you say so, angel,” Crowley said, shaking his head fondly. “If you say so.”

Aziraphale smiled at him again. Together they returned to looking out over the Garden. And the Earth spun on, big and bright and filled with the promise of time enough to figure everything out.

“I wish we had brought sandwiches,” said Aziraphale.


End file.
